DXCore plug-in types and naming convention

August 19th, 2010

DXCore has two types of plug-ins. They are “System” and “Ordinary” plug-ins. System plug-ins are located in the similar “System” folder, and all other plug-ins (usual or user plug-ins) reside in the “PlugIns” folder. These folders are located in the “Bin” folder of every product installed. The difference between “System” and ordinary plug-ins is that the former are always loaded before all other plug-ins.

There’s a naming convention for plug-in assemblies that is recommended by IDE tools developers. This convention consists of a specific prefix in the name of an assembly. Here are possible name prefixes:

Prefix

Description

DX

A DXCore system plug-in, such as “DX_CSharpLanguage.dll”.

CR

A CodeRush plug-in with some specific features, for example, “CR_AdvancedSelections.dll”.

Refactor

A Refactor! plug-in that contains a single or few of refactorings, e.g. “Refactor_ReorderParams.dll”.

Code

A CodeRush plug-in that contains code providers (similar to refactoring provider, but may change a program behavior). An example of such an assembly is “Code_Declare.dll”.

That’s it. If you’re going to extend Visual Studio using the DXCore, it’s extremely easy to do. Just bear in mind, that DXCore plug-ins are one of the most powerful extensions ever developed for Visual Studio IDE!